


Deguello

by oselle



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Gen, Kids Getting Hurt/Hospitalized, Pre-Series, Profanity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:08:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29597388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oselle/pseuds/oselle
Summary: John Winchester wrestles with his conscience and his calling after Dean gets hurt on a hunt for the first time.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	1. Deguello: Part One

**Author's Note:**

> This is a pre-series story that was first published on LiveJournal in 2009, so it doesn't reflect anything that later seasons of SPN revealed about John and Mary or their families. It foreshadows things that will happen in the first three seasons, but it's not linked to any specific episode.

In this part of the country the boys should have been in school weeks ago and if he tried to cross the border with them he would be stopped and the car searched. That was more risk than he could take even though he knew that what he had tracked all that late summer would head north and go to ground up there for the winter. For three days it rained and by the end of the third day he was certain there would be no sign left of it in these parts. He told Dean to pack up and it was Dean who said to wait one more day. The fourth day dawned wet but not raining. He took the boys to breakfast and then brought Sam back to the motel and he drove out to the forest in a light mist that late September morning with Dean beside him.  
  
* * *  
  
He parked the car at a ranger station already closed for the season and they got out and John stood there for a moment and listened to the woods. The day was dim and there was no birdsong. The car's engine ticked and moisture dripped off the trees around him and deep inside the woods and the air smelled thick and wet and loamy. On the other side of the car Dean stood looking at him with his Browning twenty-gauge across his arm.  
  
"Anything?" he said.  
  
"We need to get deeper in. You stay right beside me."  
  
"I know."  
  
"You didn't know last time," he said and Dean looked down and nodded and didn't say anything. "Let's go."  
  
They hiked up northeast through the woods and cut for sign. It was cool and raw. The leaves spiraling down and landing with whispered taps. Midmorning John picked up the sharp tang of blood on the air and beside the rotted husk of a fallen tree they found the carcass of a black bear. Its belly was torn open and empty as a gourd and the leaf litter beneath it was soaked in blood and a cloud of flies harrowed the body.  
  
"That's it," John said. He pointed the muzzle of his shotgun at the bear's hollowed gut. "Only a gytrash'll feed like that, cleaning out everything. That's why the cops always think it's a serial killer. They think only a person could be that precise."  
  
"It couldn't've been anything else?"  
  
John looked around and a few steps away from the carcass he motioned Dean over. "A gytrash always shits where it eats."  
  
Dean stared at the mess and swallowed hard. "Looks like he crapped it all out."  
  
John knelt down beside the pile and saw white bone in the ordure. Two hikers on the Appalachian Trail had gone missing this summer and John had begun to track the pattern. Then a twelve-year-old girl disappeared while camping with her parents and the forest service found the girl with her torso gutted like the bear's. She had been only two years older than Sam.  
  
"They kill, they eat, they shit and they sleep," he said to Dean.  
  
"They sleep during the day."  
  
"Mostly. Sometimes no. Come on, it won't have gone far after feeding like this."  
  
They took off up a slope where the soft groundcover had been matted down in places by the gytrash's step. John pointed out spatters of bear blood the creature had left behind and broken twigs on the trees and then a cracked and gnawed rib jutting out of the leaves. The woods were very quiet and their steps made almost no sound. He stopped and scanned the area with Dean beside and a little behind him, maybe two feet away. He looked at Dean and Dean raised his eyebrows and John shook his head and turned away and took two steps and then he heard a hard thump behind him as if Dean had fallen and in the splinter of a second it took to turn around the boy was gone and he saw nothing but a black shadow in the woods that was faster than wind-driven smoke and then that was gone too.  
  
"Dean!"  
  
He saw where Dean had been brought down and the low rut through the leaves where the gytrash had dragged him and he ran crashing through the trees after them but the thing was that fast that there was no sign. He bellowed his son's name but got no answer and then John heard two shots from a distance due north maybe thirty, forty feet. Shotgun blasts, twenty-gauge. One crisp report and the second one muffled.  
  
He set off at a dead run. His heart and breath hammered in his ears and the sound of the two gunshots still rang off the trees but there were no more shots and no howl and no cry for help. Nothing. The leaves drifted down in their lazy arcs as if nothing out of the ordinary had come this way and John ran.  
  
He found Dean alone in a clearing lying on his back with his legs bent under him and his right arm across his chest as if he were pledging allegiance. He was still holding the shotgun and his face and hair were splattered with the gytrash's black blood and he was sucking air and staring up into the trees. John fell on his knees beside him and put a hand on his face. The gytrash's blood cold and viscous under his palm.  
  
"Are you hurt?"  
  
Dean shook his head.  
  
"Did you hit it both times?"  
  
The boy nodded and John asked him which way it had gone.  
  
"North. That way. I got it right in the guts. I don't know how it's still up."  
  
John got to his feet. "You need to get it in the heart. A gutshot won't kill it. Come on."  
  
He held an arm out and Dean took it with his left hand and hauled himself upright.  
  
"This way?" John asked and Dean nodded.  
  
The gytrash had left a trail black as tar upon the dead and dying leaves and it was livid in the day's milky light. They were ten yards out of the clearing when he heard Dean fall beside him and he turned and saw the boy on his knees with his forehead down on the stock of his shotgun. He stooped and caught him just as he was falling over and ran his hand over his chest and stomach.  
  
"Where are you hurt?"  
  
"Dad..."  
  
John's hand sank into a wetness at Dean's left hip and the boy tightened up and hissed through his teeth and John sat back on his heels and rolled Dean against his chest and saw a gaping wound in his left hip and claw marks that raked the length of his thigh down to his knee.  
  
"Ah Jesus..."  
  
"Is it bad?"  
  
"No," John said. He pulled off his field coat and shirt and tore two strips off the shirt. "Little messy." He wound the strips around the deepest wounds and tied them off and Dean gasped and fisted his hands in the leaves when he made the tourniquets fast.  
  
"Anywhere else?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Are you hurt anywhere else?"  
  
"My arm hurts."  
  
John rolled the boy onto his back and felt his right arm. It was swelling beneath the sleeve and the fabric was already taut against it.  
  
"That's broken. Okay."  
  
John raised Dean up and put his field coat around him and pulled his arms through the sleeves. Dean was trembling and his face was damp and almost gray.  
  
"Where is it?" he asked. "Where is it?"  
  
"It's hurt. It won't come back."  
  
The woods were deathly silent without so much as an insect chirp or even the sound of falling leaves or water. John leaned forward and tipped the boy over his shoulder. He gathered up his own shotgun and the Browning in his right hand and wrapped his left arm tight around Dean's legs and stood up and Dean stiffened and clutched the back of John's leg.  
  
"I know it hurts. Hang in there."  
  
Dean said nothing and John set off at a loping jog. He knew from the way Dean's breath was hitching that he was hurting him but he couldn't risk going slower. He had a two slugs chambered in the shotgun and he kept his eyes on the trees around him and went on. Every few yards he did a full-circle sweep of the area and saw nothing and after a mile he began to hear the normal sounds of the woods and knew he had left the gytrash behind.  
  
By the time he got back to the car his arm was wet with Dean's blood and Dean had gone limp over his shoulder. He thought the boy had passed out but when he opened the door and laid him down in the backseat his eyes were open and he smiled at John and said, "It's not that bad."  
  
John nodded and closed the door. He got behind the wheel and threw the car into reverse and sawed it around and slammed it into drive so hard its iron frame shuddered. On the road he said, "Dean. Talk to me. How're you doing?"  
  
"I'm okay."  
  
"Why the hell didn't you tell me you were hurt? Jesus Christ, Dean."  
  
"I didn't think it was bad."  
  
"Part of the job is knowing when you're out. Understand?"  
  
"Yes, sir," Dean said. His voice was fading. "I think I got it though."  
  
"You did. It would've torn your head off if you hadn't."  
  
"Would've killed it if..."  
  
"Dean?" John cut his eyes to the rearview mirror but there was nothing to see there but the blacktop road behind him and fog in the distance. "Dean?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Okay. Stay with me, Dean."  
  
"Yes, sir."  
  
* * *  
  
Dean lay across the backseat and above him he could see the gray roof of the car and the cloudy domelight. He rolled his eyes up and saw white sky and tree branches flying past and that made him feel sick. He turned his face toward the back of the seat and studied the white stitching in the vinyl. The pain he was in was stunning, he hadn't even known that so much pain existed. It seemed as wholly outside of himself and as huge as the gytrash had been. He could still feel the recoil of the shotgun in his shoulder although that and even the broken arm were barely buzzing irritations compared to the shrieking agony in his hip and leg. He was all wet, bloody and sweating and cold.  
  
He smiled. He said, "Sam will shit." His teeth were chattering.  
  
"What? Dean?"  
  
"Sam will shit, he'll...he'll be really..." His thoughts drifted and splintered and came back together and he said, "Jealous," and passed out.  
  
When he came to the car was stopped and his father was in the backseat with him and he was wiping him off with a towel that had the oily rubber smell of the Impala's trunk.  
  
"Dad?"  
  
"Gotta get this black shit off you."  
  
"What?"  
  
"They'll ask about it at the hospital.  
  
"I don't...I don't need..."  
  
"Yeah you do," John said. He threw the towel on the floor and got up and out of the backseat and Dean heard the backdoor slam and then the driver's door and the engine turned over and Dean lay there and said, "Dad? Dad?" but John didn't answer.  
  
* * *  
  
John got back to the motel around three o'clock and when he opened the door Sam was on the couch with a book on his lap and his .410 lying on the floor out of arm's reach although he knew better. He looked up at his father standing in the doorway and he looked at the gun and back at his father and John shut the door behind him and crossed the room without saying anything.  
  
"Where's Dean?"  
  
He picked Dean's bag up off the floor and threw it on the bed and started shoving Dean's things into it, such as they were. Socks and t-shirts and his Walkman and toothbrush and there wasn't much else. Sam was at his elbow.  
  
"Dad? Where's Dean?"  
  
"In the hospital," he said. He didn't turn around.  
  
" _What?_ "  
  
"He's in the hospital. He got a little banged up."  
  
"He's okay, right? Dad? He's okay?"  
  
"Yeah," John said. "He's fine. We're checking out. Get your stuff together."  
  
"What, why?"  
  
John stopped and turned around and looked down at Sam. "I don't know how long Dean's gonna be in the hospital so we're gonna find a place in Van Buren. Now get your stuff. Pronto."  
  
Sam stared at him and his eyes dropped down and John felt his other son's drying blood on his hands and in his clothes as if it were burning him and for a moment he could just stand there. Sam looked up at John from under his bangs.  
  
"What happened to him?"  
  
"Get your stuff," John said and turned his back and went out to the car.  
  
* * *  
  
When they got to the hospital Dean was in a pediatric room with teddy bears on the walls. The kid in the bed by the door was on a ventilator and a woman who looked too old to be his mother sat beside him reading a Gideon's New Testament. In the back bed Dean was asleep on his stomach with his right arm in a cast beside his head.  
  
"Dad," Sam whispered. "What's that?"  
  
John looked down and saw the collection bottle fastened to the bed and the catheter winding up from it and under the blanket.  
  
"Nothing. Don't touch it," he said.  
  
"It looks like _piss_."  
  
"Leave it alone."  
  
He put his hands on the bedrail. Dean was very white and his face was scratched and he was sleeping with his eyes slitted open the way he'd slept when he was little more than a baby. John picked up his left hand and saw that he'd lost two fingernails and the others were clotted with blood and dirt that they hadn't cleaned out. _Lazy sonsofbitches,_ he thought. _Goddamn careless lazy sons of bitches_. He took his army knife from his pocket and started to clean Dean's nails.  
  
"Dad?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"When is he gonna wake up?"  
  
"You heard the doctor. A few hours."  
  
"Is he okay?"  
  
"He's fine. He just needs to rest."  
  
"Did you see that other kid?"  
  
"Sam," John said. He put Dean's hand down on the bed and took out his wallet. He pulled out two dollars and gave them to Sam. "There's a vending machine down the hall, go get yourself something."  
  
"What if he wakes up?"  
  
"He's not gonna wake up any time soon. Go get yourself a soda and a Snickers or something." Sam folded the bills and looked at Dean and folded them again and didn't budge. "Go on, Sam."  
  
Sam looked up at him and John nodded and Sam turned and left. When he was gone John raised the blanket. Dean was wearing a cotton hospital gown and John lifted it gingerly and stood there looking. He took a deep breath and let it out.  
  
He replaced the gown and the blanket. He pulled up a chair and sat down and leaned over and put his hand on Dean's head. He combed his fingers through the boy's hair. When Dean was very small his hair had been white-blond and now it was darker, like his mother's had been. He had his mother's face too, and over time it would probably change but now in its still childish contours his face had a softness that was nearly feminine and so much like Mary. The curve of his jaw, the blunt tip of his nose, the arch of his eyebrows. They were all hers. John was shaking and he pressed the knuckles of his other hand against his mouth and sat there.  
  
* * *  
  
It was nearly midnight and he was dozing in the chair with Sam half on his lap and asleep when a sound roused him and he opened his eyes and saw Dean looking at him.  
  
"Hey," John whispered. "Hey, kiddo." He gently pushed Sam off him and leaned forward. "How're you feeling?"  
  
"Okay."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Got the wind knocked outta you, huh?"  
  
Dean smiled. "Yeah."  
  
"The doctor said you're gonna be fine. You'll be outta here in a couple days."  
  
"Why's Sam sleeping?"  
  
"It's really late."  
  
"Is it dark?"  
  
"Yeah. It's almost midnight."  
  
"Oh," he said. He closed his eyes and opened them. "I screwed up."  
  
"No," John said. "No, you kicked some tail back there, kid."  
  
"Is it dead?"  
  
"Probably, by now. You got it twice Dean, point blank. Beautiful shots."  
  
"You need to go and look. You need to make sure."  
  
"Don't worry about it. You just take it easy."  
  
"What did you tell them?"  
  
"Bear attack. We were out hunting and we surprised a bear and it just happened like that."  
  
"Okay," Dean said. "What's our name?"  
  
"Sullivan."  
  
"Sullivan?"  
  
"Right."  
  
"Okay. Sullivan." He closed his eyes and was quiet and John thought he'd fallen asleep. Then without opening his eyes he said, "Dad?"  
  
"Yeah, Dean."  
  
"I was really fuckin scared."  
  
John reached out and took Dean's hand and ran his thumb over the scraped knuckles. "You wouldn't've known it." Dean smiled and John said, "Go back to sleep. Everything's okay."  
  
"Yeah," Dean said and he closed his eyes.  
  
* * *  
  
Dean was able to sit up in bed the next morning in a weird cockeyed perch on his right hip with his knees drawn up and his broken arm cradled in his lap and John was in the chair and Sam cross-legged at the foot of the bed.  
  
Sam said, "Lemme see it."  
  
Dean squinted at him through a narcotic haze. "Gimme five dollars."  
  
"I don't have five dollars."  
  
"Aw, so sorry. No money no looky."  
  
"Is it gross?"  
  
"It's totally gross. Hamburger."  
  
"I wanna see it."  
  
"Get lost."  
  
"Dad."  
  
"Sam," John said. "Leave your brother alone."  
  
"You suck," Sam hissed at Dean. Dean grinned and made a jerking off gesture with his left hand and John said, "Okay that's enough," and thought, _He's gonna be fine. He's gonna be just fine._ He couldn't stop looking at him.  
  
* * *  
  
He went to see Dean the next morning but Dean was sleeping and he took Sam out for breakfast and Sam asked when Dean would get out of the hospital.  
  
"Few more days."  
  
"Are we staying here?"  
  
"After he's out? No, what for?"  
  
"Well," Sam said. He pushed around the pancakes on his plate. "It's almost October. And the doctor said Dean would need some therapy or something."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"So..."  
  
"Come on Sam, spit it out."  
  
Sam put down his fork and sat up and looked at his father. "So why don't I start school? It's right down the street I wouldn't even need you to take me there. And the motel is nice and the hospital is really close by if Dean has appointments or something and it's gonna be winter soon anyway and...and maybe in the spring you could look for that thing again."  
  
"I'm going up there this afternoon," John said. "Make sure it's dead."  
  
"You're going up there?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Am I going with you?"  
  
"Hell no."  
  
"What if something happens to you?"  
  
"Nothing's gonna happen to me. That thing's got two slugs in it thanks to your brother and if it's not dead yet it's not gonna take long to finish off."  
  
"What am _I_ supposed to do?"  
  
"You're going back to the motel and on my way back I'll pick you up and we'll go see Dean."  
  
"I could be in _school_. I'm _supposed_ to be in school."  
  
The waitress came over with the coffee pot and John nodded and she smiled and topped off his cup and left.  
  
"Dad?"  
  
John sat there and turned the white mug around in a circle on the table. In the black liquid he could see his own face and the swag light above him and the window next to their booth. He looked outside where his car was backed into the parking space beneath the window. Dead leaves were lodged against the Impala's wipers. His hands had been all bloody when he'd brought Dean out of the woods and from here he could see a stain of dried blood on the rear doorhandle. He looked back at Sam.  
  
"You like it here?"  
  
"I just...I wish we didn't always move around so much."  
  
John nodded. He put a spoon in the coffee and stirred it for no reason and took it out and clinked it on the edge of the cup and set it down on the table. He picked up the cup and looked at his son over the edge of it.  
  
"I'll think about it," he said and Sam smiled.  
  
* * *  
  
It hadn't rained since the day Dean had gotten hurt and when John parked at the same ranger station he saw a bright drizzle of dried blood on the pavement. It was still red. Today the sky was brilliant blue and the colors of the leaves stood out in jeweltones against it and the sun was strong and the air almost mild but still with that scent and feeling of fall on it. Time for picking apples. He took his pack and his twelve-gauge shotgun out of the trunk and the Remington rifle also and he put the rifle over his shoulder and chambered a round in the shotgun and he stopped and listened to the woods and then went on.  
  
He hiked due north as they had that other day and he found the bear's carcass in the same place although now furred with maggots and stinking. In the place where the gytrash had gotten Dean he found a red flannel scrap of the boy's shirt and he stood there for a moment and looked at it and then he rolled it up neatly and put it into his pocket. He raised his head and looked around at the tree trunks, the sun in the leaves. Today the birds were singing.  
  
The drag path of Dean's body was undisturbed and easy to follow and he could see gouges where Dean had tried to grab onto the ground. His son's two fingernails would be somewhere in them. In the clearing there was still blood on the leaves where John had found him. He remembered kneeling over the boy and asking him if he was hurt. He remembered Dean saying he wasn't. _I didn't see it,_ he thought. _I didn't see it._  
  
In a few months these woods would be shrouded in snow and all trace of these things would be gone. For now there lay a black trail of the gytrash's blood upon the leaves and ferns and roots of the forest floor. The thing had been wounded and clumsy in its retreat and John had no trouble tracking it. Above him the sun was near its midday peak. He continued on a quarter of a mile and the woods became quiet and he put the shotgun under his arm took the rifle from his shoulder and bridged the barrel across his arm and when he came to a turning in the trees the gytrash looked up at him.  
  
John dropped back a step. He was maybe ten feet from it. It was sitting like a drunkard in a slouch with its hindlegs stuck out in front of it and its claws turned up on its thighs and its back against the vestige of some colonist's stone wall and its belly was open and crusted thick with its own tarry blood. He could smell it and hear it breathing. Its eyes were the ashen red of banked coals and its snout was matted with blood. It put its wolflike head down and blood ran from its mouth and John sighted the rifle and curled his finger around the trigger and then it looked up at him again and its eyes were yellow. Burning. Like sulfurlamps burning in its head.  
  
It looked at John and said, "How's your boy?"  
  
For a moment John was stunned motionless. He looked up from the riflescope and stared at this thing that could not speak, should not speak, was for all its supernatural abilities still little more than a beast and as he looked at it it grinned as it also should not have done and then the yellow light went out of its eyes and it dropped its head and John pulled the trigger and shot it through the heart and killed it.  
  
He approached it slowly and with the muzzle of the rifle he turned it over onto its back and stared at it. Its eyes were open and black and already clouding. He stood there and studied it.  
  
"You don't talk," he said.  
  
He set down the guns and his pack and took a bowie knife from the pack and sawed off its head. Then with a short-handled spade he dug two pits some distance apart and rolled the body into one of the pits and the head into the other and filled in the pits with dirt and tamped them down and covered them with leaves.  
  
When he got back to the ranger station it was mid-afternoon and he put his things in the trunk and got behind the wheel. He sat there with his elbow on the car door and his hand over his mouth and stared into the trees where the fading daylight was already not reaching to the forest floor and the woods were growing dark. Dark as all the dark places. Known and unknown.  
  
After a while he took out his journal and slid the pencil from it and turned to a clean page and wrote the location and the date and the time and the weather at the top of the page. He sketched the gytrash as he had come upon it sitting against the stone wall. When he was finished with the sketch underneath it he wrote _This one could talk_ , but he didn't write down what it had said. Then he wrote _Yellow eyes_ , and closed the journal and put it on the passenger seat and turned the ignition and pulled out.


	2. Deguello: Part Two

_You think you've seen it all, that's it. That's your problem. You think you've seen it all and then something comes out of nowhere and knocks you on your ass. You're never gonna reach the end of it. You kill off one thing and there's something else just waiting to take its place and that's worse than the one before and the one before that. Next thing will be even worse. It never stops. Missouri didn't know the half of it herself. She's not out on the road, she doesn't know. She didn't know a damn thing compared to what I know now, wish I didn't know. The boys've gotta know it too. I wish it didn't have to be this way but it does. It just does. Goddamnit, Mary. Goddamnit._

* * *

He pulled into the hospital parking lot without Sam and without the ice cream he'd said he would bring and he went straight up to the pediatric ward on the fourth floor. The boy who'd been on the ventilator was gone and his bed was gone and there was nothing where it had been but an empty bay of dark machines and wires. On the other side of the curtain the television muttered but Dean was twisted up on his side with his back to the set and the covers kicked down to the bottom of the bed and he didn't even look up when John said his name. John took Dean's head in his hands and turned the boy's face up to him. He put a hand on the back of his neck and another on his forehead. Dean's eyes were glassy and drifting and his skin was dry and flushed and baking and John let him go and turned and stalked out of the room and the desk nurse looked up at him before he even made it to the station as if she'd felt him coming. John jerked a thumb back at the room.

"My kid's burning up in there."

"What's the patient's name?"

"Sullivan," John said. He put his hands on the desk. "Dean Sullivan, his temperature's through the goddamn roof when was the last time anyone checked on him?

She started going through the charts on her desk and she was shaking her head and saying she would check and John said, "Get a doctor in there. Now. Hey!" She stopped and looked up at him. "I want a doctor in there in sixty seconds, you got it? His goddamn brains are cooking in his head."

"I'll page him," she said and John turned away from the desk and charged down the hallway like a bull. Before he got to the room he saw a supply closet and banged the door open and started pulling things off the shelves and from behind him someone said, "Sir, you can't be in there. Sir!" and he grabbed a handful of chemical ice packs and shoved his way past that person and went back to Dean's room. He broke the seals on the ice packs and shook them and packed them around Dean's neck and under his arms and on his chest and forehead. Dean shuddered and tried to push them off.

"Stop..."

"Sorry, kiddo. We've got to get you cooled off."

He stripped the top sheet off the bed and went into the bathroom and twisted on the coldwater faucet in the shower and soaked the sheet and wrung it out. He went back to the bed and threw it over Dean and tucked it around him. The television droned. Over his shoulder he shouted, "Get someone in here!" and he turned and punched the call button so hard the plastic casing cracked.

The doctor and the pediatric nurse with her balloon scrubs came and they got him out of the way and John stood at the foot of the bed with his hands shoved under his arms. Dean started to vomit in a weak hitching trickle and they sat him up quick with no caution for his leg and he cried out in pain for the first time since he'd been hurt.

"Jesus _Christ_ ," John said. He grabbed the nurse's elbow and pulled her away and got his arms under Dean and rolled him over. The boy threw up helplessly onto him. He was boneless and so hot in John's arms.

"Easy. Easy," he said. He didn't even know if Dean could hear him. "Everything's gonna be all right."

* * *

Later, late enough for the windows to have darkened. Dean's temperature was down to 101 and he was asleep. His eyes moved restlessly in fever dreams. Every few minutes John leaned over and put the back of his hand against Dean's forehead. The side of his face. His forehead. Then he sat back and just stared at the boy and then he went through the routine all over again.

The telephone beside the bed rang and John grabbed the receiver in midshriek.

"Dad?"

"Sam. Sammy..."

"I thought you were picking me up. It's after six o'clock."

"Sam, listen..."

"What's wrong?"

"I came to the hospital first and your brother was feeling kind of sick so I had to stay."

"Is he okay?"

"He's okay now. He's sleeping."

Sam was quiet.

"Are you coming to get me?"

He looked at Dean and shook his head. "No Sam, not tonight. Okay? I'm just gonna stay here another few hours. Look, Sammy...there's twenty bucks in my bag, you know the one? Take it and order yourself a pizza. Look in the phone book. Get whatever you want on it."

"Dad..."

"Just turn on the shower when the delivery guy gets there so it looks like someone's with you, okay? You know how to do it."

"Dad, _please_." His voice was breaking. "Please come get me."

"Sam, I need you to be a stand-up kid right now, okay? I'll get home as soon as I can." He paused and listened. "Sam?"

After a moment Sam said, "Okay, Dad."

"That's my boy."

"Bye."

"See you soon."

"Yeah," he said and the line clicked and went silent. John turned in his chair and quietly put the receiver in the cradle.

* * *

The nurse came in and checked on Dean. "He's much better," she said softly and John nodded without looking at her. "It's not that unusual for someone to spike a high temperature after an injury like this. Especially someone your son's age."

"No one was in here. He was by himself."

"I know. I'm sorry, but we can't be everywhere at once, unfortunately."

"I don't need you to be everywhere. I need you to be here."

"I understand."

_No you don't,_ he thought but he didn't say anything.

"Is there anything I can get you?"

"No," he said and she left and then John heard her behind him again and he turned to see what she wanted and Sam was standing there with his jacket on and his hands shoved in his pockets.

"I called a cab." He took a fistful of bills out of his pocket "It was seven dollars."

John got up and took Sam by the arm and led him out of the room and Sam craned his neck around to see Dean and in the hallway John put Sam against the wall and crouched down to the boy's eye level.

"I gave you an order. When I give you an order I do it for a reason. You understand?"

"But you said Dean was sick..."

"That's right and that's why I wanted you to _stay home_."

"That's not home. That's just some shitty motel."

He knelt there and stared at Sam. His hands were on Sam's shoulders and after a while he dropped them and stood up. He rubbed his neck and looked at the wall. Then he reached out and put a hand on the back of Sam's head and turned him around. "Go see your brother," he said. "Don't wake him up."

* * *

He left Sam curled up and sleeping at the foot of Dean's bed and went down the hall to the vending machine and plugged in two quarters. He rested his head against the machine while coffee trickled and steamed into the paper cup.

"He should take that other one home, for heaven's sake. They can't be here all night."

The last drops of coffee plinked into the cup and John left the cup in the vending slot and stood there listening.

"I would've told the father but what a temper he's got. And that little one looked so pathetic I couldn't bring myself to do it."

"Poor thing came here all by himself. God only knows where their mother is."

"Poor things. Both of them."

John took the cup out of the slot and looked down into it. The oily surface of the liquid shook and rippled. He went back to Dean's room and stood looking at the boys. After a while he sat down. He thought about his sons and their mother dead these ten years and about the thing he had killed in the woods. He drank the coffee and it was too hot and too bitter and it burned all the way down. He thought about Texas also.

* * *

Gail was the physical therapist's name and by the time Gail visited five days had passed since that morning in the woods and Dean hadn't once been out of bed. She got Dean upright and when John stood up to help she waved him back politely and John sat back down on the edge of the chair with his hands clasped between his knees. Dean lowered his legs over the side of the bed and Gail told him to put his hands on her shoulders and then she got him up on his feet. Barely. She was such a tiny woman that Dean was taller than she was and yet he needed her arm around his waist just to stay on his feet. He was so skinny. He took a step forward and then another and each time he looked as if he were trying to walk on broken glass. His jaw was set in a rigid line and he was breathing hard through his nose like a plowhorse and he looked at his father and back at the floor and back at his father and then Gail said, "Mr. Sullivan, why don't you go down to the cafeteria and get Dean some juice for later?" He looked at his son in a sweat from having taken four trembling steps and the little woman holding him up and he nodded and got up and left and stayed away a good while.

When he came back with a carton of orange juice and a straw Dean was back in bed and looked as if he'd just run a sprint in the middle of a heatwave. Gail told him that Dean had done really well and tomorrow they would try to make it all the way around the room.

* * *

Dean was asleep when John left. He pulled into the motel parking lot and got out with his journal under his arm and went into the room and sat down on the bed and turned on the light. He flipped through the journal and stopped on a page and dialed a number. The phone rang nearly three thousand miles to the south. A woman answered and John knew she must be Cora.

"I don't guess Ed is there?"

"No, he's still at work."

"He's still teaching at the high school?"

"Well, yes... "

"What time do you expect him home?"

"He's got his tutoring this afternoon so not until five o'clock or so...I'm sorry, I didn't get your name."

"This is his brother."

His sister-in-law was quiet on the other side of the line. Then she said, "John?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Is everything all right?"

"Yes ma'am."

"And the boys?"

"They're fine. If you could just let Ed know I called."

"I will," she said. "I know he'll be real happy to hear from you, John."

"I hope so."

"Where can he call you back?"

"I'll call him," John said. "I'll call him around six o'clock, how would that be?"

"That would be fine," she said. "Are you sure you don't want to leave a number?" she asked and John hung up the phone. He stood up and left and got in the car and went to pick Sam up from school.

* * *

Sam was doing his homework in Dean's room and John went down to the pay phones in the lobby and arranged quarters in front of him and dialed. The phone rang only once.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Ed."

"Cora told me you called. I'm glad you called back."

"I said I would."

"What's goin on, John?"

"I'm thinking about bringing the boys down for a visit."

Ed was quiet for a moment.

"That would be real nice. You know it's been a real long time."

"Mary's funeral."

"That's right."

John sat there with the phone against his ear. His brother had lived in Del Rio for nearly twenty years and a soft Texas cadence had gotten into his voice. He pictured his brother standing in that tidy Texas kitchen. He'd been to their house only once and that had been before Sam was even born but he could see it just as clearly as if he'd been there yesterday. Nice oak cabinets. The round breakfast table. The wreath of dried chilies over the backdoor. He stacked quarters before him and fanned them out and put his hand over them.

"Thinking of bringing them down for more than a visit, Ed."

Ed didn't say anything. John put a quarter in the phone.

After a while his brother said, "Well, that would be real nice too, Johnny. You know that's what we talked about."

"I know."

"How're they doin?"

"They're all right. Dean got in little bit of a scrape but he's fine."

"What sort of a scrape?"

"Nothing serious. Broke his arm..."

"I mean how'd he get hurt?"

John didn't answer.

"John? You there?"

"I'd say we can get down there in a few weeks. Does that sound all right?"

"That sounds just fine. I'll tell Cora. She'll be over the moon."

"I'll call you when I have a better idea of when we'll be coming in."

"All right. John?"

"Yeah."

"You won't change your mind this time?"

"No, Ed. I won't change my mind."

* * *

They had dinner at Pizza Hut the first night that Dean was out of the hospital and Dean was still very pale and limping badly. He had lost weight and he looked dirty and ill fed and uncared for. The waitress stared at him and at John and at Dean again.

He'd rented a two-room apartment a few blocks from the hospital and their first morning together in the apartment John woke very early from a troubling dream and sat up on the sofabed and looked around the bleak room in the day's first gray light. He swung his legs off the bed and sat there for a while with his head in his hands. He'd dreamt that the gytrash had come back to life and had clawed its way out of the grave, body and head together. It slouched through the black woods and swung its head back and forth and sniffed along the forest floor and it was slavering and its claws were still red with his son's blood and its eyes in the moonlight were yellow as lambent piss. He could see it but only see it. He didn't exist in the dream except to witness and he knew the way you know things in dreams that this was some new thing and some ancient thing and that he couldn't run from it and he couldn't stop it. No one could stop it.

He stood up and crossed the apartment and stood in the doorway of the other room. The shades were down and in the dim light he saw the boys asleep under the blanket that John had brought in from the car. Sam with his back to his brother and Dean on his side with his left arm around Sam. He hadn't seen them sleeping that way since they were very young and the sight struck him so that he couldn't look away. He hadn't told them they would be leaving here as soon as Dean could walk a little better. He hadn't told them anything about Texas. He stood there and watched them sleep.

_Used to think I knew what I was doing. When did that change? These boys. It's not right. Mary would kill me if she could see them. If she's looking down on me I hope she sees I'm doing the right thing now. Please let this be the right thing._

After a while he stepped up to the bed and pulled the blanket up over Dean's arm and Sam's shoulder and walked out of the room and closed the door.

* * *

Dean woke up before Sam and lay there listening to his brother breathe, putting off the moment when he would have to move. Sam smelled like shampoo and fabric softener but he could still smell hospital on himself, on his skin and in his hair and leaching out of the cast and the dressings on his leg. He eased himself away from Sam and tested the leg with a careful stretch that still made him hiss and swear through his teeth and Sam stirred and rolled over.

"You okay?"

"Yeah."

"It still hurts a lot?"

"It's not so bad."

"Bullshit."

"Listen to the mouth on you. I'm telling Dad."

"You say worse shit than that."

"I'm older than you."

"Do you need one of those pills?"

Dean put his good arm over his eyes. "No. I just need a minute to stretch it out." His leg was throbbing from his hip down to his toes. He felt as if the whole bed were thudding along with it.

After a while Sam said, "Dean?"

"Yeah."

"Are you gonna go out hunting with Dad again?"

Dean put his arm down and turned his head to look at Sam. "Of course I am."

"What if you get hurt again?"

"I won't. I'll be more careful."

"Dean?"

"Jeez, you're a pain in my ass. What?"

"Dad was in here before."

"So?"

"So, he just stood there and looked at us for a long time."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Do you think he's okay?"

"Okay like how?"

"I don't know. Like don't you think he's different or something?"

Dean ran a hand through his hair. He couldn't remember the last time he'd washed it and it felt very dirty. He stared up at the popcorn ceiling. Waterstains there in cloudlike shapes.

"I don't know. When I first woke up in the hospital, he was just really quiet. I thought he'd be mad but he wasn't. Then when I was better I thought he'd start giving me shit but he didn't. And now I don't know. I keep waiting for him to let me have it about how next time I better be more careful and what did I learn from this and all that but he hasn't said anything."

"Do you think we're gonna stay here?"

"I guess. Until there's another job."

"What if Dad doesn't take any more jobs? Like those kinds of jobs?"

"Sam," Dean said. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Sam shrugged and rolled over away from Dean. "Nothing."

Dean looked at the back of Sam's head and then turned his face up to the ceiling. He closed his eyes and lay there and after a while Sam got up and started getting ready for school.

* * *

On a Thursday in October Dean had therapy at the hospital all morning and then his father picked him up and they went to lunch at the diner near the apartment. Dean ordered a grilled cheese and his father ordered coffee and the waitress brought the coffee first. His father picked up the cup and drank and looked at Dean over the rim.

"You tired?"

"Not too much."

"It's a lot better than it was, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"You think you'll be able to do those exercises on your own?"

"Yeah," Dean said. "Some of them, I guess."

He put the cup down and said, "Listen. I've got something to tell you. I haven't told your brother yet, wanted to tell you first."

Dean looked at his father. "Okay."

"We're leaving in the morning."

"Oh," Dean said. "All right. You've got another job?"

"Something like that."

"Where are we going?"

"Texas."

"Wow," Dean said. "That's far."

"About three days' drive."

"Okay."

"Your brother, I think he kind of likes it here. I don't think he'll be too happy about this."

Dean shrugged. "He'll get over it. He always does."

His father nodded. The waitress brought Dean's sandwich and set it down in front of him and he picked up a half of it and looked at it and then balanced the edge of it on his plate and looked at his father.

"Don't we have some relatives down there?"

His father drank more coffee and shook his head. "Did," he said. "Years back." He didn't say anything else. Dean sat there and studied him.

"Dad?"

"Yeah."

"Are you mad at me?"

His father smiled and shook his head. "No. I'm not mad at you, Dean."

"Okay."

"Eat your sandwich before it gets cold."

They went back to the apartment and Dean watched television while his father sat at the kitchen table with the road atlas open before him. By two o'clock his eyelids were falling and his father told him to go to bed.

"I'm not tired."

"You're half asleep. Go lie down. We have to be on the road early tomorrow."

He held out for a little while longer and then he got up and went into the other room and climbed into the unmade bed. The autumn sunlight fell through the window and made a clean white square on the opposite wall. The shadow of the windowshade's pull ring sat right in the middle of the square and a strip of wallpaper hung off that wall like a yellowed party streamer. Down the street some dog was barking. In the next room his father turned pages of the road atlas. He closed his eyes and thought about Texas and wondered if it was still warm there and then he fell asleep.

He dreamt that he was in a cellar or going down to a cellar and the steps kept changing on him the deeper he got, from metal to wood to stone to something like wet dirt. He had a light with him like a newspaper rolled into a cone and set on fire but the fire went out and it was very dark and above him steps began to pound on the floor, back and forth. He called out for his brother but no one answered and the pounding grew louder and louder as if something were coming for him in the dark and he woke up in a sweat. His heart was hammering. He lay there staring at the ceiling and then the apartment door slammed and Sam burst into the room and banged that door behind him so hard it bounced back open and some piece of the hinge fell out on the floor. Dean elbowed himself up off the bed but Sam didn't look at him. He threw his books across the room and fell down on his knees beside the bed and got his empty duffel out from under the bed and then turned on his knees to the dresser and pulled one drawer all the way out to the floor and started shoving his clothes into the bag.

"Guess Dad told you," Dean said.

"Yep." Sam said. He didn't look at Dean. His mouth was set in a hard little line.

"Where is he?"

"Took the car to the service station. Long drive, you know."

"Keep shoving shit in the bag like that you're gonna break it."

"Yep."

Dean sat up on the bed and ran a hand over his face and looked down at the top of his brother's head.

"Jesus Christ, Sam, it's not that big a deal."

"Nope."

"You'd better not let Dad see you acting like that."

Sam didn't say anything. He got up and went over to his books and picked them up and brought them back to the bag and started packing them in with his clothes.

"Don't those have to go back to the school?"

"I'm taking them with me."

"Isn't that kind of stealing?"

"So what? That's what we do isn't it? Steal?"

Dean sat there and stared at Sam. His brother was red in the face and still hadn't looked at him. "That's not what we do," he said quietly.

"Whatever," Sam said and he picked up one big textbook and shoved it into the bag and the bag split wide open at the bottom with a noisy rip and the clothes and the books and everything came spilling out and Sam kept on packing as if that hadn't happened. Now he was crying.

Dean said, "Sam..." and Sam picked up the whole mess in his arms and threw it away from him into the corner. He put his head down and pressed his eyes against the crook of his arm and sobbed.

Dean watched him for a moment and then he got down off the bed. He crossed the room and picked up the bag and looked at the tear and set it back down. He started gathering Sam's books and putting them in a neat stack. Social studies. Math. English.

"Leave em." Sam said behind him.

"No. You should take them."

"Just leave them," Sam said and Dean turned around and saw his brother sitting there looking at him with his eyes swollen and his face all wet.

"Sammy..." he said and Sam started crying again. Dean went over and sat down next to him. "Hey," he said. "Come on." He put an arm around Sam. "Come on." Sam pulled up his knees and Dean put his other arm around him and a hand on top of Sam's head. "It's not so bad," he whispered. "I'll let you ride shotgun the whole way, okay? I promise. Okay?"

Sam shook his head. "It's always gonna be like this," he said. "It's just always gonna be like this."

Dean didn't know what to say. He sat there and held his brother and rocked him back and forth. After a while Sam stopped crying. He wiped his nose on his sleeve.

"Dad's gonna kick my ass for ripping that bag."

"We can put some duct tape on it."

Sam nodded and said, "Okay," and they got up off the floor and finished packing.

When they went to bed that night Sam turned his back to Dean and Dean lay behind him and watched him. A pale blue nimbus of electric light from the alley lay on his brother's cheek and hair and eyelashes. He could see him blinking.

"Hey," he said and Sam didn't say anything. "Sam, I know you're awake."

"What?"

"You still mad?"

"I'm not mad," he said. "I just hate him."

"You need to cut Dad some slack."

"Why?"

"Because."

Sam was quiet and after a moment he said, "You always take his side."

Dean lay there and thought about that. He didn't know what to make of it. It hadn't ever occurred to him before this moment that there was or could be a side that was not their father's, much less that anyone would take their father's side by conscious choice and not by the simple and unquestionable reality of there being none other. The idea that this was something Sam knew and had known maybe for a long time was too incredible to address.

He poked Sam in the ribs. "You hate me too?" he said. "Huh, you hate me too?" He poked him again to try and make him laugh and Sam edged away from him and curled in on himself into a tight little ball and said, "Get off me."

"All right, go ahead," Dean said. "Be a jerk. You'd better snap out of it by tomorrow."

Dean closed his eyes. He was almost asleep when Sam said, "He's gonna get you killed."

"What?" he muttered.

"He's going to get you killed. Next time or the time after that or whenever. You. Or me."

"Jeez Sam, you're ten years old."

"You've been going out with Dad since you were twelve."

"That was baby stuff. Ghosts and shit."

"Not anymore."

Dean opened his eyes and looked at the ledge of Sam's bony shoulder. He sighed and scooted himself up behind Sam and got an arm around him and Sam was at the edge of the bed so he couldn't go anywhere and Dean pressed his face into the crook of Sam's neck beside his ear.

"Nothing's gonna happen to you, you fuckin whiny-ass baby. I'll beat the living shit out of anything that even looks at you funny. I'll fill it so fuckin full of buckshot it'll look like fuckin swiss cheese. So shut the fuck up and go to sleep," he said. "Okay?"

Sam didn't say anything and Dean squeezed him. "Okay?"

"Okay," Sam said.

"What's that?"

"Okay, okay. I said okay."

Dean said, "Good," and settled back into the pillow with his arm still around Sam. After a few minutes Sam's breathing evened out and Dean knew his brother was asleep but he couldn't get back to sleep himself and he lay awake for a long time.

* * *

When they left the next morning it was snowing and the new snow lay soft as dust on the bare potato fields and there were crows in the fields, still and silent and dead black against the white like silhouettes cut out of the landscape. By the time they made it to Bangor the snow had turned into sleet and then it turned into rain and it rained all the way through New Hampshire and Massachusetts and New York and on down into Pennsylvania. John drove until well after dark and after both of the boys were asleep. Dean slumped against the passenger door and Sam across the backseat. He turned on the radio and listened to news and weather and sports on the AM band with the volume down so low he could barely hear it over the windshield wipers. Eighteen hours after leaving Van Buren he crossed the border into West Virginia and a heavy autumn fog in the old hills of that country. When the boys were in bed and asleep John sat down beside the room's little table and poured himself two fingers of whiskey without ice and drank it slowly. He sat there and looked at the pictures on the wall. A hound with a duck in its mouth. Wild turkeys on the wing. His sons were soundly asleep, lying back to back. They looked like a drawing on a Christmas card. Visions of sugarplums. He couldn't imagine what his children had visions of. He put the glass down on the table and turned off the light and went to bed.

* * *

Interstates from West Virginia into Arkansas: 64 West, 65 South, 40 West. Six lanes of controlled access blacktop and a heat shimmer on the road in front of them and the big overland tractor trailers roaring by with dirt and the smell of hot rubber fuming off their wheels and their mudflaps advertising truckstops and parts suppliers and long-haul depots across the continent. Handmade crosses and plastic flowers cropping up on the soft shoulder to eulogize the highway wrecks of the summer just past. Rock and rhythm and blues and country on the radio and Dean spinning the dial from one end of the band to the other and Sam in the back staring out the window with the sun in his eyes.

* * *

They stopped for the night in Texarkana just over the state line. He left the boys in the room and went to the pay phone by the motel office and called his brother.

"I was gettin worried, John, hadn't heard from you in a while."

"We're in East Texas. We should get in tomorrow afternoon. Four, five o'clock maybe."

"Well, we're lookin forward to it. Cora's got their room all made up for them."

John stood there and nodded. He rubbed the back of his neck.

"John."

"Yeah."

"I hope you've thought about stayin on too."

"A few days. See the boys get settled."

"You're welcome to stay longer'n that, you know. Those boys'll still need their father."

"You know I can't do that, Ed."

There was a long silence. John could hear late crickets in the grass around him. Sound of Cora putting away the dishes in Del Rio.

"She died in a fire, Johnny."

John closed his eyes and leaned against the phonebooth. This was old talk from ten years back and it made no more sense now than it had then. Still he said, "No she didn't."

"John..."

"You didn't see it. You didn't see what I saw. You don't...you don't know what I know."

"For the love of God, John, when are you goin to give up on this craziness?"

"I have to go."

"John..."

"I'll see you tomorrow," he said and hung up.

When he got back to the room Dean was sitting up on one of the beds with his back against the headboard.

"Sam said you went to get ice."

"Forgot the bucket," he said and he took the bucket off the dresser and went back out.

He dreamt all night, short intense dreams that barely faded to black before the next one began. He dreamt of Mary more vividly than he had in years, her light hair caught up in a ponytail and her green eyes lit by the sun. He saw their house in Lawrence which he had not laid waking eyes on in nearly a decade and the front of it was whole but the back was burnt down to the foundation and still smoldered. He carried Dean out of the woods and when he got him to the car the flesh on his son's leg was sloughing off in great bloody strips he kept picking them up and trying to put them back on as if it could be so simple and Dean lay there on the backseat with his thigh denuded down to the bone and smiled and told him it was all right and dear God he looked like his mother.

He woke just before six o'clock and lay there exhausted as if he hadn't slept all night. He got up and went into the bathroom and drank a glass of water and splashed cold water on his face and neck and toweled off. When he stepped out of the bathroom Dean was sitting up in bed.

"You okay, Dad?"

"Yeah. Yeah, fine."

"Are we almost there?"

"Yeah. This is the last day."

Dean nodded. "Who were you on the phone with last night?"

"That was about the job."

"What kind of job is it?"

John shrugged. "Haunting, I think. Won't know until I check it out."

"Until _we_ check it out."

"We'll see."

"I'm fine, Dad."

"I said we'll see."

Dean bit his lip and nodded and John looked at him for a minute. Then he said, "Maybe we could do something today."

"Like what?"

"We're a little early. Maybe we could do something besides driving all day. Something, you know. Fun."

Dean sat there and stared at him as if he didn't know what he was talking about. Probably didn't.

* * *

They got to San Antonio in the afternoon and they went to the Alamo and they went to Six Flags and stayed there until it closed. They had a late dinner at Friendly's and Sam sat in the booth and read the brochures he'd gotten at the Alamo.

"The Mexican forces attacked with a cry of deguello," he read, "Meaning no quarter. What does that mean?"

"Means no mercy," John said. "Fight to the death."

"Oh," Sam said and Dean said, "Are you gonna read every one of those things out loud?"

"Yeah, maybe I am."

"Dork."

"Shut up."

"Nerd."

"Jerk."

"Dweeb," Dean said and stole fries off his brother's plate and Sam smacked him on the arm and Dean stuffed the fries in his mouth and laughed.

John told them he had to make a call and he went out to the phone in front of the restaurant and dialed Ed's number and the machine picked up.

"Hey Ed, it's me. Listen, I know it's late but we got a little held up. We're gonna spend the night near San Antonio and come over tomorrow morning. I promise," he said. "Okay, I guess I'll see you then." He hung up and went back inside.

He woke up sometime in the predawn darkness and his first thought was, _Answering machine._ He thought it again. Then he sat upright and swung his legs off the bed and turned on the light and picked up the phone. In the other bed Sam was rubbing his eyes and Dean was already propped up on one elbow.

"What's the matter?" Dean said.

"Nothing," he said. He dialed his brother and after three rings the machine picked up and he could tell from the length of the beep that his message and probably other messages were still on the tape. He hung up the phone and got up and started getting dressed.

"Are we leaving?"

"No," John said. "I have to go out. I'll be back in a few hours. You stay here with your brother. There's pop tarts from yesterday but we can have breakfast when I get back. Don't go out. Don't answer the door for anyone."

"Where are you going?" Sam asked.

"Something I've gotta take care of." He opened his bag and took out his short-handled shotgun and breeched it open and checked the rounds and then snapped it shut and put it back in the bag. He shoved his pistol into the back of his belt and put his field coat on over that and he told the boys he'd be back and he left them there still in bed.

* * *

It was just past seven-thirty in the morning when he pulled up in front of Ed's house in Del Rio. There was no car in the driveway. A yellow schoolbus rumbled down the street and John thought, _He's gone to work. He's already left for work._ But he knew he hadn't.

He got out of the car and stood there and looked at the little ranch house. Cora's garden of palm and cactus lined the walk and there was a wooden sign on the door that read The Winchesters and a horseshoe above the door and John went up to the door and rang the bell and no one answered.

"Young man, can I help you?"

He turned and saw the woman from the next house standing in her driveway wearing her housecoat and slippers and holding a newspaper in her hand.

"Ed Winchester," he said. "Do you know where he is?"

"Are you family?" she said.

The Val Verde County coroner's office opened at eight o'clock. There was no one there but himself and the secretary who unlocked the door for him. The air conditioning had been off all weekend and the building was hot and airless. The coroner came at eight-thirty and walked him to the back.

"I need to warn you," he said, "These folks're just like we found em. This won't be like the funeral parlor."

"I've seen bodies before."

"I sort of got that impression. Still, I'm obligated to say it."

The coroner opened the drawer and unzipped the bag. John had not seen Cora since Mary's funeral. She was stiff and her eyes and mouth were wide open and the right side of her head was crushed so that John could see bone and brain beneath the plaques of blood. John nodded and the coroner zipped up the bag and closed the drawer and moved to the next and opened it. He unzipped the bag and John stood there and looked at his brother.

"This is how they found him?"

"Yessir."

"With his head turned around like that?"

"Yessir. I've never seen anything like it myself but they said the car must of turned over two, three times at a high speed. A lot can happen to folks on the inside of somethin like that." He added, "I think it was real quick."

"I'd like to see the car."

"Pardon me?"

"I'd like to see the car. Where is it?"

"Well, I guess they'll have towed it to the sheriff's impound lot."

"Can you tell me where that is?"

"Marie out front can give you the directions. Mr. Winchester?"

John looked up at him.

"I'm real sorry for your loss."

John nodded. He turned away and walked out and behind him he heard the coroner zip the bag and the drawer slammed shut.

The roof of the car was crumpled in like paper on the passenger side and all of the glass was busted out and the dashboard and seats and interior door panels were bloody. On the backseat was a dusting of yellow sand or dirt. The doors couldn't open so John angled himself into the empty windowframe and ran his hand over the backseat and then straightened up and looked at his fingers. He put his hand to his nose and got a faint scent off the dirt like a match head or swamp gas.

"You have any idea what this is?" he said to the sheriff's deputy. The deputy shook his head.

"Must be dirt. The vehicle traveled pretty far off the road."

"The dirt's yellow out there?"

"Some of it, I suppose. Could be. I never really thought about it."

"Do you have a paper towel or something?"

The deputy went back in the sheriff's office and came back with a white napkin and John wiped his hand and folded the napkin and thanked the deputy and got back in his car. He placed the napkin between the pages of his journal and started the engine and pulled out.

* * *

Sam was stretched out on the bed with his chin on his hands watching television and Dean was sitting cross-legged behind him when there was a knock at the door and Dean looked up. Sam looked over his shoulder at him.

"It's just the maid," Dean said.

"Did you put the sign on the door?"

"Of course I did."

The curtains were drawn over the window. Beside the door was a panel of nearly opaque orange glass in a pattern of circles like the bottoms of beer bottles stacked in rows. Dean heard shuffling on the other side of the door and then a man's shape moved from the door to stand in front of the glass panel. The man cupped his hands and put them on the glass and looked through them and he stood there with his face and form turned dark orange and distorted. Dean looked at Sam and made a gesture to him and Sam lowered the television and Dean turned to the door and watched.

The man kept his cupped hands on the glass and moved his head slowly from left to right as if he were scanning through binoculars. Then he said, "Yoo hoo? Anyone home?" Dean could see his lips moving against the glass.

Sam rolled over and sat back on his heels and Dean swung his legs off the bed and leaned down and picked up his Browning off the floor and put it across his lap.

The man said, "Dean?"

Dean sat up bolt straight and hefted the shotgun in his hands and behind him Sam said something and Dean turned his head and cut his hand across his throat and Sam stared at him and Dean looked back at the door. The man shouldn't have been able to see anything through the thick glass but he seemed to be looking right at Dean.

"Dean? Why don't you come on over and open the door?"

* * *

Driving east on Highway 90 maybe five miles out of Del Rio John saw a black Ford F-150 pickup parked on the western shoulder and a girl there kneeling in the ditch. He pulled over and turned off the engine and climbed out. She was maybe fifteen and she was hammering a wooden cross into the ground with the flat side of a textbook and a boy sat in the truck waiting for her. She looked up at John when he came beside her and she shielded her eyes.

"I'm not doin anything wrong," she said. "My teacher and his wife were killed in a crash here and I thought it would be nice to put up somethin."

John looked down at the cross. His brother's name and Mrs. Winchester were written on it along with rest in peace and yesterday's date.

"No, that's...that's very nice," John said.

"Did you know him?"

"A little. He was your teacher?"

"Yessir, fourth period geometry. I heard it on the telephone tree. I think it's goin to be in tomorrow's paper."

The boy in the truck called to the girl that they were going to be late and she took a little bouquet of flowers out of her pocketbook and put them in front of the cross and stood up and wiped off her hands. She smiled at John and climbed up into the truck and the boy pulled out and drove away.

When they were gone it was very quiet. John stood there and looked at the cross and then he looked around him. Here was a fence of wooden posts and wire and he could see where his brother's car had left the road and broken through the fence and slammed across the desert on its own momentum. Deep tire tracks in the ditch and churned up dirt and broken fence wires sticking out and kinked into corkscrews. One of the poles lying flat on the ground. He walked out a ways and followed the path the car had taken. A few yards from the road he could see where the car must have flipped the first time. There was a deep gouge in the ground and the hole and the grass around were studded with auto glass like blue crystals. There were two more spots like it so the car had rolled three times and he could see from the deep rut it had left that it had landed on its roof and kept traveling before it stopped. More glass here and the shattered red plastic of the brakelight covers and a windshield wiper and the earth soaked in transmission and brake fluid and motor oil. Tracks of other vehicles too, police cruisers and the ambulance and the towtruck. Nothing else.

He crouched down and picked up a handful of dirt and it was brownish red and loose and sandy and he let it sift through his fingers and he stood up and looked out across the desert. The wind rippled and whispered across the wiry grass. The shadow of high clouds passed over the plain. It was so quiet. He took a breath and held it and exhaled and he took another breath and then let it out in a howl that rang into the silence and hung on the wind. He put his fists on his head and did it again and then he fell to his knees in the grass.

After a while he looked up and wiped his face. He sat there with his hands at his sides and it came to him all of a sudden.

_How's your boy?_

As if the thing was at his side and whispering in his ear.

_How's your boy?_

He scrambled up onto his feet and turned and took off towards the car at a dead run.

* * *

Dean turned to Sam. "Where's your gun?"

"I left it in the trunk."

"Goddamnit, Sam."

"Dean?" The man rapped on the glass. "Dean, I know you're in there."

Dean stood up.

"Don't open the door!" Sam whispered.

"If I don't get rid of him someone's gonna call the cops," Dean said. He went to the door and the man stood still as a post and seemed to watch him.

"Who are you?" Dean called out.

"I'm a friend of your daddy's, Dean. Why don't you open the door?"

"I know all of my father's friends. What's your name?"

"My name is Ed. How's that? Do you know Ed?"

"No I don't."

"Well then I don't think you know _all_ of your father's friends."

Dean opened the door the length of the chain and looked out and the man turned and looked down at him and smiled. He was tall and was wearing a white stetson hat that shaded his eyes.

"Dean! How's the leg?"

"How do you know my name?"

"I told you, I know your dad. Say, is Sammy in there with you? Of course he is."

"I think you should leave."

"Just let me say hi to Sammy and I'll go."

"Get the fuck outta here, asshole."

The man shook his head. "Did your daddy teach you those manners?"

"Get outta here or I'll call the cops."

"No you won't," the man said. He took a step towards Dean and he put a hand on the door and although he barely touched it the door slammed open hard enough to send the chainbolt slingshotting across the room and Dean stumbling back until he hit the bed. Sam shouted his name and Dean set the back of his knees against the bed and pumped the forearm of the shotgun and stood there with the gunstock against his shoulder.

"I said get the _fuck_ out of here."

The man stood spraddlelegged in the doorway.

"All in due time, Dean. All in due time."

"In due time I'm gonna blow a hole in your ass."

"No you won't. You won't call the cops and you won't shoot me because if you do _that_ , that nice, fat lady in the office, well, _she's_ gonna call the cops and they'll come out here and find two little boys all by themselves in a shithole like this with plenty of ammunition and an unarmed good old boy dead on the porch. On a school day to boot. That'll raise some eyebrows even in Texas. You want to go to a foster home, Dean? You know what happens to little boys in foster homes? They get _fucked_ ," he said and made a quick, vulgar motion with his hand, "Up the ass by their foster daddies. So why don't you put the gun down so we can talk nice and polite."

Dean didn't lower the gun. He stood there breathing hard.

"Put the gun down you little prick."

"No," Dean said. He felt Sam beside him and he shifted a little to stand in front of him.

"Suit yourself," the man said. He turned his face towards Sam and grinned. "And there's Sammy. See, that's all I wanted. I just wanted to say hello." He squatted down on his hams. "Hello there, Sam!"

Sam leaned into Dean and whispered. "I don't think he can cross the salt."

"What, this?" the man said. He grinned and looked down and drew in the salt with his index finger and then raised his hand and blew the grains at them. "Stings a little. That's all. You'd need more than some Morton's to keep me out if I really wanted to get in." He crouched there with his hands hanging between his knees. "My my my, Sammy. You're all grown up. How the time flies."

"You've said hi," Sam said. "Now get out of here."

"All right," he said. He stood up. His knees popped loudly. "I'll be going. See, Dean? Kept my word." He pushed his hat back on his head with his thumb and winked at them and the sun hit his eyes and for that second they were a sick, livid yellow. He said, "Be seein you," and he turned and stepped off the concrete curb. Dean ran to the door and slammed it shut and bolted it and then he stumbled over to the window and shoved the curtain aside and looked out but the man wasn't there. Not at the door, not in the parking lot, not by the office. Nowhere.

"He's gone," Sam said.

"Yeah."

"What the hell was that?"

"I don't know," Dean said. He shook his head and swallowed hard. "I don't know."

* * *

He pulled askew into the space in front of the motel room and before he was out of the car Dean was standing in the doorway with his twenty-gauge in his hand and John got to the door and took Dean by the shoulder and turned him around into the room and closed the door behind them.

"You all right?" he said and Dean nodded. Sam was sitting by the table with his arms around his knees and he didn't say anything.

"What happened?"

"Someone was here."

"Who?"

"I don't know. Some guy. He said his name was Ed."

"Ed? What'd he look like?"

"Tall. Taller than you. Not fat, not skinny. White cowboy hat. One of those stupid ties with the silver buckle thing..."

"What'd he want?"

"He wanted to talk to Sam."

"What?"

"He knew his name. He knew my name. He said he just wanted to say hi to Sam and then he did and he left. I don't think he was human, Dad."

"Why not?"

"He had yellow eyes," Sam said from across the room. "Just for a second and then he was normal again."

John looked at Sam. He looked down at Dean. "Where did he go?"

"I don't know," Dean said. "It was like he was there one second and gone the next. I didn't see a car or anything."

"You stay here," he said and walked out of the room and crossed the parking lot to the motel office. The bell above the door jingled and the clerk looked up.

"Yessir?"

"Did a man come in here a little while ago?"

"A man?"

"Yes, a man, tall in a white hat."

"Nossir, in fact no one's come in all day but you."

John turned and looked out the office window. He raked his hand through his hair.

"No one's come in at all?"

"Nossir."

"My son said a man came to our room. Did you see that man?"

"Well, I can't say as I've had my eye on the parkin lot the whole time."

He stared at the woman.

"Is somethin wrong, sir?"

"Do you know the Lord's Prayer?"

"Pardon me?"

"The Our Father. The Lord's Prayer, do you know it?"

"Well, yes..."

"Say it for me."

"Sir?"

"Say it for me. Say the Lord's Prayer."

The woman had gone pale and still. Her hand fluttered up to her neck where a small gold cross was hanging.

"Our...our father," she stammered. "Who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name..."

"Thank you," John said.

He walked out of the office. From the corner of his eye he saw the woman put her hand over her heart. He walked around to the back of the office and saw nothing but trash cans. There were no other cars in the lot. He went back to the room. Dean was sitting on the edge of the bed and he stood up when John came in and took a step towards him and John seized him by the shoulder and slapped him in the face.

"You don't open the door for anyone when I'm not here. I don't care if it's the goddamn fire department, the police, I don't care. You never open the door to anyone, do you hear me?"

Dean stood there with his head down and his jaw clenched. The imprint of the slap reddening on his face. John shook him. "You hear me?"

Dean nodded. "Yes, sir."

He let go of Dean's shoulder and the boy didn't move. He'd never hit his sons, not ever, not once. He looked at Sam and Sam was staring at him with some expression on his face that John couldn't read but that he'd never seen before on either of his children. He turned away towards the door.

"Get your stuff and get in the car. We're leaving."

* * *

He drove straight through that day and all through the night and into the next morning and Sam slept in the backseat but Dean kept his eyes open the whole way and none of them spoke. They reached South Dakota at a little after eight o'clock in the morning and by the time he'd driven up the hill Bobby was out on his backporch with a cup of coffee in his hand watching them and John cut the motor and looked at him through the windshield. Somewhere around the back of his house one of Bobby's dogs was barking its head off. The only other sound on the morning air was the tick of the Impala's overdrawn engine.

"Go on," he said to Dean and Dean got out of the car and crawled in the backseat and woke up his brother and the two of them walked up to the house like a couple of gypsy kids come begging.

"You boys look about ready to fall over," Bobby said. "Get on upstairs and get to bed. Me and your dad'll bring your stuff in." He ruffled Dean's hair as Dean passed him on the porch and the screendoor smacked shut behind them and John got out of the car and stood beside it. His legs were shaking from the drive. Bobby came down the porch steps and stood there and looked at him.

"I would've taken the boys to Jim's but I need your library. And I need a drink."

"What's going on, John?"

"The thing that killed Mary."

"You found it?"

"It found me. And I think I know what it is."

"Guess I'll put some fresh coffee on," Bobby said. He turned and then looked over his shoulder at John. "I'll make yours Irish," he said and went on up to the house.

* * *

It was past one in the morning when Bobby went to bed and John stayed up drinking and fed logs and newspapers into the fire. He took out his journal and opened up the napkin and looked at the sulfurous powder he'd shown Bobby and he got out a pen and tried to write down what had happened but he was too drunk. Or he just couldn't. Some time after that Bobby came down and stood in the doorway watching him until John finally looked in his direction.

"For God's sake, John, get to bed before one of the boys sees you like this."

'They've seen worse," John said. He waved a hand at Bobby. "They've seen worse."

Bobby shook his head. "Don't burn the goddamn house down," he said and went back upstairs.

John fell asleep or passed out. He dreamt or hallucinated that Mary came into the room and sat down opposite from him. He said her name and she didn't say anything. She sat there and stared at him.

"Forgive me," he said to her. She didn't say a word. Then she was gone.

He slept and woke up. It was still dark out and the fire was down to red coals and the room was cold. He got down in front of the fireplace and moved aside the grate and put in kindling and two logs and stoked the fire and then he put back the grate and sat down heavily in the chair and watched the flames kick up. His glass was empty. He put his head back and closed his eyes.

He heard the stairs creak and then the floorboard and he thought Bobby had come back to yell at him some more. When he opened his eyes Dean was standing in the doorway. He stood there in his bare feet with his hand on the wall and with the toes of one foot curled under as if uncertain of his next step and he was so thoroughly his mother's son in that moment that the sight could have stopped John's heart. He thought he would spend the rest of his life trying to forget it.

"Dad?"

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry."

John put his hand over his face and shook his head. "No it's...it's all right, Dean. I'm sorry I hit you. I didn't mean to."

"I know."

"Go on back to bed."

He looked up just as Dean was turning away and called him back. Dean looked around and stood there hesitantly.

"Come here, Dean."

Dean crossed the room and stood beside the chair and John took him by the arms and moved the boy in front of him. He sat with his head down. He looked at Bobby's dirty rug. At Dean's bare feet. He remembered a morning when Dean was not even a year old and was lying on their bed and he and Mary each had him by a foot and they were kissing the chubby bottoms of his bare feet to make him laugh. Had he ever been that man? Dean ever that child?

"Dad?"

"I want you to know why I do these things. Why it's like this."

"I know why, Dad."

"No," he said. He looked up at Dean's face, half lit by fire. The other side in the dark. "No you don't. Sam's too young to hear this, but you need to know. I never wanted this for you."

"Dad, it's okay..."

John shook his head. "I don't want you to be like me. Always getting knocked on your ass. You're going to be so goddamn strong, Dean. Nothing'll ever get the jump on you. Not like me. You'll..." He clapped Dean's arm and looked down and looked up and his eyes were wet and he couldn't help it. "You'll be like iron. Like goddamn iron. Get thrown in the fire and come out even stronger. You understand?"

"Yes, Dad."

"Okay," he said. He rubbed Dean's arm. "All right." He let go of him and sat back in the chair and looked at the fire. "Go on back to bed."

The boy turned and walked away and then from the doorway he said, "Dad?"

John looked at him.

"We have to stay together. I can't look out for Sam on my own. I can't teach him the things he needs to know. We have to stay together no matter what."

John sat before the fire and stared at his son and knew that Dean had known that he had planned to leave them in Texas. He'd known and he hadn't said a thing and he knew his father had changed his mind and he said nothing about that either, he didn't ask one question, he never would.

After a while John said, "I know, son," and Dean smiled and turned and went up the stairs.

* * *

John sat and watched the fire burn down. The windows were that dead black of the darkest part of the night. The high school in Del Rio where his brother had been a teacher had a good football team and John thought Dean would have been a natural. Sam was promising a lankier build so he probably would have gone out for basketball. Or maybe he would have just stuck to the books, that seemed to be more his thing. Either way it didn't matter. There wasn't going to be any of that.

Once he'd had time for made-up things and in that distant past he'd read a story about hunting and the boy in the story had killed his first buck and been marked on the face with its blood. He thought about Dean lying in the forest deadfall with a creature's black blood on his face and his own blood running out into the ground but he'd been marked long before then. Both of his sons. For what he didn't have the strength or courage to think of on this cold morning and he knew he would have to fix that and soon. But not now.

After a while the windows began to pale and he got up and went into the kitchen and put the coffee on. He sat down at the table and folded his hands on the oilcloth and the first bird called and the dog barked and the new day began.

_End_


End file.
